R.A. Gudino - Aspiring Writer

Friday, January 17, 2014

No more evaluations, for now...

I have written about this before and here it is again, because it's frequently on my mind. For about a year now, I have been looking for a psychoeducational evaluation to give
me a larger picture of Raccoon's strengths and weaknesses.

I
had an appointment scheduled for October, then I cancelled it. I tried
to go through our insurance but couldn't find the right services. I
found some, he is now receiving occupational therapy for his Sensory
Processing Disorder, but not the comprehensive evaluation I had in mind.
But the clock is ticking and today was crunch time, when I had to
decide whether or not to pursue more testing since we only have two weeks left.

After
talking with the King and with my mom, I feel at peace about not
testing right now. I found a psychologist who was recommended who seems like a good fit, so the plan is for me to observe Raccoon during our
homeschooling experiment, reevaluate how things are going after a year,
and possibly pursue testing when he turns 5.

Part of me
is still curious what the results would be if we tested now. I'm always
curious. But I have doubts about his ability to sit and focus for 2
hours, even with breaks. He might surprise me, he often does, but it's a
big gamble to take with so much money on the line since we'd be paying
for the evaluation out-of-pocket.

Sometimes I feel like if I just knew what was going on, I could get everything right for him. But there is no fixed "right approach" because he is constantly changing and growing, as am I. So, going along with my school phrase of the year, I am going to let it go. I know early intervention is best and the earlier the better, but I feel like we have a pretty good handle on the day to day things, and five is still early enough if things aren't fully explained by his SPD.

Except speech, I do still plan to purse that because he has a few sounds he struggles to pronounce, especially with words like shrimp and ghost. It's fairly typical for boys to have delays with certain sounds, but he gets frustrated when others don't understand him. I can relate to that.

Is this too personal? I wonder... but I have found other parents sharing about their journeys into evaluation to be very helpful, so I wanted to put this out there in case someone else is standing on the edge, wondering whether or not to leap into the testing water.

No matter what, Raccoon is amazing. He fits into our family just right, just the way he is.